Practical? Very likely not. Affordable? if it goes into production, almost certainly not. Cool? Undeniably.
Jul 022021
Jul 022021
On January 6 of this year, Capitol Hill protestor Ashli Babbit – who apparently posed a threat to the US government despite being armed with neither an F-15 nor a nuclear weapon – was shot dead. The shooter has remained anonymous in the larger media, but was apparently made public back in April:
Capitol Cop Who Murdered Ashli Babbitt Identified
The cop in question is quite a piece of work. For instance:
You can see him in the background. A blurry closeup:
Note how he is pointing his pistol at staffers and security folk. Notice how he also has his finger on the trigger. Both of these are Very Bad Things.
But wait! There’s more! From 2019, there was this news article about apparently the same guy:
US Capitol police officer walks out of bathroom without his pistol – and now is under review, report says
Four people died that day. Two from natural causes, one from an accident, and one was summarily executed. No charges will be brought against the executioner… but I can see lawsuits galore.
Bonus round: imagine the exact same events, but place this back when leftists tried to storm the Supreme Court to overturn the law of the land during the Kavenaugh hearings. And then reverse the color values. How big of a story would it be *then*?
Jul 022021
I was previously only kinda “I’ll probably get around to it eventually” interested in the new Amazon movie “The Tomorrow War.” But I have now been convinced to see it sooner than later… by people who hate it.
The Tomorrow War is Chris Pratt’s ultimate salute to working-class heroism (plus aliens)
BackBack in 2017, fresh off the continued success of the Guardians of the Galaxy franchise and gearing up for Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, Chris Pratt gave a cover-story interview to Men’s Fitness magazine, and bemoaned the state of cinema about white men. “I don’t see personal stories that necessarily resonate with me, because they’re not my stories […] The voice of the average, blue-collar American isn’t necessarily represented in Hollywood,” Pratt said. That was a willfully ignorant statement back then, and it still is now.
Sold!
Jul 012021
SpaceX Launch Pad cam caught sight of the Superheavy booster being moved to the pad. Since it’s a live stream it may no longer be available depending on when you see this, but it at 12:29:30 to about 1:35:30 on the on-screen clock.
Jul 012021
A painting from 1979 by one David Egge, published in “Future Life” magazine, depicting a United State Space Force orbital facility.
Soooooooonnnn…….
Jul 012021
Apparently, in China a “white monkey” is an ethnically non-Chinese foreigner (any ethnicity, any skin color, any nationality) who does a job that requires no skill other than being a foreigner. A lot of advertisements… and a lot of propaganda. Some supremely bizarre stuff here (the Hiddleston ad for vitamins is slack-jawed cringeworthy), and some downright racist stuff. Africans who are welcoming Chinese industries to come in and stripmine their countries should probably take note.
The rates of pay described seem to generally be pretty awful, making me wonder why foreigners would sign on. And there’s one guy (at 8:17) who pretended – let’s hope he’s pretending – to be a US military guy who is turning on the US in favor of China. That’s the sort of thing that cancel culture would be better aimed at rather than some edgelord 15 year old playing video games.
Jul 012021
The idea has been floated of selling signed copies of “SR-71.” I’m currently checking into what I could get a box of issues for to see if it would make sense to try to sell a few copies my own self. Given that they’re coming from Europe, postage might be a concept-killer for this. If it’s close, what I might do is charge a bit more… and add a bit more. 11X17 or 18X24 prints of a few of the snazzier diagrams, perhaps.
Who would be interested? I’m not taking orders, just trying to judge interest. If interested at (handwave) $13-$15 plus postage, send me an email:
By the way: Amazon now says that this will be released on July 28, moved up substantially from September.
Jun 302021
A 1980’s Boeing concept art depicting a passenger transport of 100 or so years in the future. It has a number of… interesting features including a front that opens up like an Arakeen Sandworm. The cockpit and a fair amount of space behind it hinge upwards to provide access to the sizable interior of the aircraft. The gigantic transparent canopies are certainly a remarkable feature. Even the passenger windows on the side are vast compared to the tiny human figures. The engines look somewhat small for the design, but at least they exhaust almost directly onto the vast canopy over the tail “lounge” area. Surely that’ll not pose any problems…
The full rez scan of the artwork has been made available at 300 DPI to all $4/month patrons/subscribers in the 2021-06 APR Extras folder at Dropbox. If you would like to help fund the acquisition and preservation of such things, along with getting high quality scans for yourself, please consider signing on either for the APR Patreon or the APR Monthly Historical Documents Program.
Jun 292021
Photos show bodies of COVID victims floating along Ganges River in India
The bodies aren’t, apparently, being dumped straight into the river. They’re being buried in *shallow* graves in the sand on the shore of the river, Which… is essentially the same thing, just with a time delay. I remain astounded that the same nation with hundreds of millions of people who think it’s good and proper to bathe and drink in the same “sacred” river they dump bodies and sewage directly into has homemade nukes and ballistic missiles and missions to the Moon and Mars.
Jun 292021
When a black hole encounters a neutron star, who wins?
Well, clearly not the neutron star. Duh.
LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA Finds Elusive Mergers of Black Holes with Neutron Stars
LIGO continues to astound. In my lifetime gravitational astronomy has gone from “it’s maybe kinda scientifically plausible but so far beyond our technology as to be effectively impossible” to “oh, look here’s another collision of black holes a bagrillion light years away.”
LIGO detected gravitational waves from the black hole-neutron star merger. This simulation depicts what a (well protected) observer might see from nearby. https://t.co/n84kwnimlW pic.twitter.com/dxemzZbKaB
— Corey S. Powell (@coreyspowell) June 29, 2021